One True Place
by pitbulllady
Summary: Monsters, Inc.""Lilo and Stitch" crossover-After 2 12 years of being trapped in a Louisiana swamp following his "banishment", Randall Boggs finds himself on the Garden Isle of Kauai, where he meets a most unusual little human girl, and her even MORE unusu
1. Default Chapter

...One True Place

Chapt. One- Hellhounds On My Trail

"I got to keep movin', I've got to 

keep movin', 

Blues fallin' down like hail, Blues fallin' down like hail

And the days keeps on worryin' me,

There's a Hellhound on my trail, 

Hellhound on my trail, Hellhound on

My trail..."

Robert Johnson, 1937

FINALLY! My first-EVER fanfic! Many thanks to Sean, Light Rises, Cool22 and to Joy, aka, "Ty Parsec", wherever you are, for the inspiration. There have been other "Monsters, Inc./Lilo and Stitch" crossover fics, but I hope to make this one of the best. It will be quite different from Sean's fic, "Experiment 301", so don't think I ripped him off at all! 

Disclaimer: I don't own Randall Boggs, though I dearly wish I did;) He, however, is now the property of the Walt Disney Company. I DO own "Cyrus Fotenot" and "Chris Daigle", and the unnamed owner of a red Dodge Durango. The Catahoulas are based on my own pack of top-notch hog dogs, "Hannah", "Midnite Girl", "Cayenne", "Boo"(no, she's not named after "the Kid"), "Cheyenne", "Cailidth", and "Ringo". When hog hunters do it, the squeal is REAL, y'all!

This story is dedicated to my old girls, "Wise's Splash", and "Princess", who finally found THEIR One True Place, even though everyone said they could never belong...rest in peace, ladies, and to everyone who has ever been treated unfairly just for being "different". May you someday find YOUR One, True Place as well.

2004-St. Martin Parish, Achafalaya Basin, Louisiana

Cyrus Fotenot pulled the Z-71 pickup off to the shoulder of a dirt road, somewhere deep in "da Basin", about eight miles east of St. Martinville. Turning to his passenger, he inquired, "Dis look lak a good 'nuff place, eh?" The passenger, Chris Daigle, his second cousin, nodded in agreement, "Oui; us can turn out da dogs here-oughta be plenty dem hogs out here in DIS parta da Basin, I guar-ron-TEE!" With that, the two young men clambered out of the pickup, careful not to put their feet down into any tall grass or vines, or anywhere else they couldn't readily see, lest one of them disturb the rest of one of the swamp's many resident Cottonmouths, fresh out of their winter sleep, hungry and more irritable than usual. Without further ado, they both walked around to the rear gate of the Z, to an aluminum dog box welded to the bed of the truck, the openings in the side of which revealed sets of eerily gleaming blood-red eyes and eager whimperings. Reaching in behind the dog box, Chris was the first to strap on a miner's hat-a hard hat equipped with a battery-powered halogen light, while his cousin pulled out a tangle of dog chains, muttering curses in French as he attempted to make some headway into separating the tangle into three different chains, each ending in a "coupler"-a double snap made for holding two dogs at once. Chris laughed at Cyrus' battle with the dog chains. "Shoulda done did DAT 'safternoon, while it still light, Cuz", he advised. Cyrus, growing impatient with the recalcitrant metal, tossed the whole metallic mess over the bed of the truck to Chris, with the admonition, "Mebbe I shoulda got yo' Mama ta undo 'em, me!" This had the effect of earning him a one-fingered salute from his cousin, but one accompanied by chuckles-all in a day's fun for those two.

After what seemed an eternity, the chains were finally separated, and Cyrus finally had donned his miner's helmet and snake-proof leggings, and it was time to take out the contents of the aluminum dog box at last, much to THEIR delight. The two cousins proceded-with some difficulty-to remove and apply the chain leashes to some half-dozen Catahoula Leopard Dogs, or Catahoula Curs, as they were more commonly known in Louisiana. The powerfully-muscled, short-coated dogs, descendants of the huge, savage "Alano" Mastiffs brought over by the DeSoto's Conquistadors as biological weapons in the 16th century, were prime examples of Louisiana's official State Dogs. Although smaller than their Spanish ancestors, owing to mixing through the centuries with the wolf-like Native American dogs, the French herding breed called a Beauceron, and quite likely the gamey little pit-fighting terriers brought in by the wave of Irish immigrants in the 19th century, the Catahoulas were no less fierce. With their short coats mottled and spotted and blotched in an array of patterns that looked more appropriate for some child's finger painting than for any living animal, and usually ice-blue eyes, the powerful animals had an almost surreal look about them, a look magnified at night, when any available light striking their retinas would reflect back a Hellish red, owing to the light reflecting directly off of the blood vessels in the eye, undimmed by any pigments. This day and age, though, instead of their usual quarry being armored knights on horseback, or unarmed Choctaw Indians, it was feral hogs, whose ancestors had escaped to the bayous and swamps of the Deep South for generations, breeding back in type to their origin-the European wild boar. It was this dangerous and wily foe which Cyrus and Chris hoped to encounter tonight, as much for the sheer adrenaline rush as for the prospect of meat for the table, or another trophy head for the mantle.

Walking three dogs each, the two men more or less simply followed their charges through a barely-noticeable pathway into the swamp, their headlights illuminating the way ahead of them, revealing clouds of insects amidst the trees and vines, rising like so much smoke in a spring revelry. Reaching a small clearing, they stopped and began to unclasp each dog's collar from the chains, giving each a pat of encouragement to send them on their way. Noses high and tails thrashing, the Catahoulas set off silently, like a pack of four-legged Raptors, into the inky blackness of the swamp. If they could not strike a fresh trail within five minutes, they would instinctively return to their handlers, then set off again in a different direction, and would continue to do so until they made a "strike"-a fresh track of their quarry. Unlike hounds, they ran with their heads up, reading the wind, and ran silently, without "opening up" or bawling while giving chase, which might have alerted their wary and often-dangerous prey to their presence. It would be only when the pack had finally cornered, or "bayed up", their quarry, that they would bark, to let their handlers know of their location. Little did the two cousins know, but tonight's chase would end a bit differently from usual, for the fresh trail that their dogs would hit that night belonged to no pig.

About a quarter of a mile from where Chris and Cyrus has released the pack of Catahoulas, anticipating a good dog-hog battle royale, a nutria had met its demise earlier that day in the jaws of a Conibear trap, set the previous winter by a Cajun fur trapper, and forgotten. The nutria, a 20-pound semi-aquatic rat, related to the muskrat, was not a native to Louisiana. Its ilk had been accidentally introduced into the delicate ecosystem some near-seventy years prior, when a hurricane had smashed open the cages of a Depression-era fur farm, releasing the South American natives into the waterways of the Bayou State, and they had made themselves at home ever since. The life of this particular nutria did not end in vain, however, for it had barely ceased its final thrashings before it was discovered with delight by another denizen of the Basin. This particular denizen, like the nutria it had found, was also not a native of Louisiana; in fact, it wasn't even a native of this WORLD, period. It, or rather, HE, had also not eaten in nearly 48 hours, and the carcass of a recently-deceased 20-pound rat was indeed a welcome discovery!

Unlike the recently-deceased nutria, however, this denizen had a name. It was Randall Boggs, and he had found himself an uninvited, and unwilling, resident of the Achafalaya some two and a half years earlier, due to a series of extremely complicated and unfortunate events back in his REAL home, in a parallel Universe known simply as the Monster World, the existence of which was totally unknown to Chris Daigle, Cyrus Fotenot, or the six Catahoula Curs. Not that the Catahoulas could have cared less, even though it was HIS trail, left just a few hours previous, which they happened upon that night, along with the tantalizing aroma of swamp rat roasting on an open fire.

To the uninitiated, not familiar with the native flora and fauna of the Basin, as the Achafalaya drainage system was often called, a creature like Randall Boggs would have seemed right at home in this swampy environment of cypress knees, Spanish moss, slow-moving blackwater streams, big snakes and alligators, for he had a superficially-reptilian appearance, his 12-foot-long, lean, muscular body being covered with flat, smooth scales-scales which normally were colored purple, with a complex mosaic of teal and turquoise criss-crossing his dorsal side, ending in a bright blue, thin green-banded tail. What might have stood out as a bit unusual, though, was the fact that Randall possessed what would seem to be an abnormal compliment of limbs-four that served primarily as arms, four more to serve primarily as legs, though all eight could be called upon to serve in either capacity should the need arise. The more-than-casual observer would have also noticed Randall's normally-upright stance, which was itself quite non-reptilian, and his facial features would have betrayed an intelligence no reptile-indeed no animal of this world save for a human-could possess. Moreover, he was NOT, in fact a reptile, being a warm-blooded creature, and as such afflicted with a high metabolism, requiring regular intake of high-caloric meals. The latter, as it turned out, were not always easy to come by in a swamp, especially for a monster who was accustomed to ordering meals to go from fast-food establishments back home. This was why the discovery of a recently-deceased nutria was such a joyous find.

Randall had only just finished up the last of his welcome meal, and was still sitting close to the still-smoldering remains of his little cook-fire, generated with the help of a pack of matches he'd found in an unlocked tar-paper cabin used by many different trappers, hunters, and fishermen in the swamp, and belonging to nobody in particular, when he became aware of something WRONG. It was just a feeling, but over the months of his exile, he'd learned by harsh experience to trust such a feeling, and it was this intuition, along with a good dose of old-fashioned determination and fighting Irish spirit, bequeathed to him by his own ancestors before THEY had been tossed OUT of the Human World and into that world into which Randall himself had been born, that had allowed him to survive all this time. Randall stopped stirring in the embers of the fire with a stick, from where he sat in the smoke(as much to keep the mosquitoes off as for any other reason), and listened. He heard nothing, and that was precisely what bothered him. No crickets, no whip-poor-wills, no frogs-and THAT was most unusual for a spring night in the Achafalaya. The lack of the normal wild orchestra could mean only one thing, that some other predator besides himself was afoot in the Basin, and more often than not, that other predator would be human. Encounters with humans, and their dogs, had been unavoidable, though Randall was getting better and better at being able to stay out of their way as time progressed. His body still bore numerous scars, some more recent than others, of such encounters. He had learned that to many of the human residents of this region, virtually anything with legs that wasn't furniture was fair game for the cooking pot or the barbeque pit. He had no intention of becoming the primary ingredient in a pot of "Boggs jambalaya". He had taken the time to stealthily watch the humans, and learn some of their ways, and their unusual dialect, and it had benefited him greatly in his daily quest for simply staying alive.

Now, as he listened, trying to pinpoint any tell-tale sound that would betray the intruder's whereabouts, he thought he heard a twig snap, or maybe a leaf crunch underfoot. He had intentionally kept his little fire to a minimum, to avoid its smoke being noticed, but now, he wished for a bit more light to illuminate whatever lay out there within the confines of the dark trees. It could just as easily be a bobcat, or even a black bear, something which might give a curious sniff in his direction, then decide that a twelve-foot-long lizard monster would be too big to mess around with, and be on its merry way. Randall slowly stood up, wishing for better night vision than nature had equipped him with, when suddenly, they were nearly upon him!

Like creatures from Sherlock Holmes' worst nightmare, they appeared first as so many pairs of bobbing, blood-red orbs weaving through the trees. Even as Randall stared, nearly spell-bound, the sounds of their panting could be heard, and their bodies seemed to materialize from the trunks of the trees themselves-creatures that were as at home in the swamps and bayous as any alligator, black bear or Cottonmouth, but which would have looked equally at home springing out of the mists of some moonlit English moor.

The foremost of the dogs, upon spotting its quarry, increased its speed, and it seemed that it would actually hit such a burst as to carry it PAST its intended target, but at the last second, before Randall even had a chance to react, it slammed on breaks, no more than three feet separating them, and began to bark loudly, constantly springing from side to side as it did. As Randall backed himself up against a large cypress, his mind furiously tried to grapple with the seriousness of his current situation, while angrily chastising himself for letting himself get into this situation in the first place. The other five dogs were soon to join the first, and all six commenced a horrible den of loud, explosive barks, designed as much to confuse and disorient their prey as to give their location away to their owners, scrambling through the swamps in pursuit. Randall knew from experience with such dogs that to try and fight back against this many would be futile and fatal; he could have easily killed a single dog with one well-placed bite, maybe even taken on two of them successfully, but six was far too many. He knew that these spotted devils would not give up, and if they managed to get behind him or under him, would pull him down and tear him to pieces. Yelling at them or threatening them would only increase their aggression. He also was aware that six dogs-wearing collars no less-weren't just out running game in the swamps by themselves; HUMANS had brought them here and released them, and that meant that those same humans could not be too far behind! His momentary complacency, the result of a full stomach(for once), had cost him dearly, and now he had to figure out how to get out of this grave situation alive and in one piece. To seek refuge in a tree would be easy-and it would also make him a sitting duck, so to speak, when the hunters showed up with their lights and guns, assuming they were carrying the latter(many hog hunters disdain the use of firearms, preferring to dispatch their dangerous adversaries with a knife in hand-to-tusk combat). In a bit of quick, spur-of-the-moment thinking, the sort of thinking that had allowed Randall's survival for as long as he could recall, long before he ended up here, he considered that while climbing a tree and remaining there would be suicidal, nobody said he had to STAY in the SAME tree! With the trees fairly close together, it would be possible-risky, but still possible-for him to leap from tree to tree, until he hopefully was able to put some distance between himself and his attackers. He didn't even want to think about what might happen should he miss a leap, or should a tree top snap beneath his weight, and with no further ado, he turned in an instant and scrambled up the cyress like a immense scaly purple squirrel, trying to shut out the sounds of the Catahoulas trying desparately to claw their way up after him, biting huge chunks of wood from the trunk in frustration. As Randall reached the highest part of the tree that would still bear his weight, he glanced down briefly, long enough to see one of the dogs leap some twelve or more feet straight into the air along the trunk, and fasten its jaws like a hydraulic vice onto a protruding branch, hanging there, twisting and growling, like some grotesque Christmas ornament. Randall had no time to reflect on this amazing feat of canine power and agility, but could not help but think, what if that branch had been HIM? 

It was not long before he could hear the shouts and whistles of the hunters, and spot their lights weaving through the night swamp below him. Taking a deep breath, and a quick prayer to whatever deity might still happen to have a soft spot for exiled lizard monsters, he hurled himself from the tree in the direction of the next, feeling the branches scrape and grab at his body like so many clawed hands, but automatically shutting the pain out of his mind, endorphins and adrenalin pumping. He landed on the trunk of the second tree, as its top swayed to and fro beneath his weight, then immediately sized up the next, and leapt again, easily soaring the fifteen or so feet that separated the two trees. He tried not to let himself think too much of what was going on down below, lest it distract him from his concentration and cause him to miscalculate a leap. This display of aerial acrobatics continued for who-knows-how-many trees, until Randall could no longer see lights below him or hear the barks of the dogs. That didn't mean they weren't there, of course, just that he'd been able to buy himself a little more time. To speed things up a bit, he shimmied down the trunk of the last tree he'd landed in, glanced around quickly, and headed in the direction of what he knew would be the best tool for throwing the dogs off his trail-State Highway 131, a fairly busy connector road linking US 90, or the "Old Spanish Trail", with Interstate 10. If the dogs could manage to make it across that road without some casualties, well, then, he figured that it was SOMEONE'S intent that he, Randall Joseph Boggs, was to meet his demise in a Louisiana swamp, far, far from home, at the jaws of a pack of killer canines. Even as his keen hearing picked up the sound of his pursuers crashing through the bushes on his heels, they also picked up the siren song of the traffic on the highway, and he headed straight towards that steady hum and roar like a moth to a flame.

As Randall emerged from the swamp into the clearing next to the road, however, he suddenly found inspiration for a slight change of plans. He had completely forgotten that not even a quarter mile up the road to his left was a railroad crossing, and it took the sound of a train whistle approaching that crossing to remind him. Without another glance, he dropped to all-eights for greatest speed, and headed straight to where the train would soon be crossing. Panting hard, his sides hurting from exhaustion, he and the west-bound train pretty much reached the crossing simultaneously. The barrier had already come down, red lights flashing and bells ringing, and cars were already stopped, when some of the drivers were to be privileged to glimpse something very rarely seen in this part of the Human World-a real, live monster! In fact, the quite-shocked driver of the red Dodge Durango, who had chosen to stop as close to the tracks as the barriers would allow, was to be so privileged as to have said monster actually leap upon HIS roof, pause for a moment like a huge cat about to pounce on a mouse, and then spring off the vehicle-straight towards the passing train! The last sight that stunned driver was to have of this mysterious reptilian creature, which would make the news in four Parishes by the next morning and grant its erstwhile pursuers, Cyrus and Chris, their allotted fifteen minutes of fame, was of it landing, cat-like, on a passing empty flat-bed car, before that particular car passed on out of the illumination of the Durango's headlights, heading west.

Alright, so concludes Ch. One. Sorry it's so long, but that's me. Reviews would be appreciated, flames will likely be ignored.

pitbulllady


	2. Ch 2 Travelin' Blues

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Ch. 2 Travelin' Blues

Author's Note: THANX to all who have reviewed so far; I will TRY to lighten up with the descriptives, and shorten some sentences, but I tend to write just like I talk...so, we'll see!

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Disclaimer: I do not, unfortunately, own Randall Boggs, nor do I own Lilo, Stitch, Moses, Myrtle(thank goodness!), Eleana(the other dark-haired girl), Theresa(the blond), or Yuki(the Japanese girl with the hockey obsession). They all belong to the Walt Disney Co.

"I've got to ride that lonesome train

My heart is heavy with aches and pain

I said 'but someday, someday baby,

After awhile, you will be sorry...'"

"Someday After Awhile", by Eric Clapton

After making what could only be considered a miraculous leap from the roof of a red Dodge Durango onto an empty flatbed car of a passing freight train, Randall was on his way...to WHERE, he didn't know. Not that he actually CARED, either. What mattered, more than anything, was that he was able to escape the jaws of death (a pack of pursuing Catahoula Leopard Dogs), and hopefully, this wretched swamp in which he'd spent the last 2 ½ years of his life. As he came to a landing, flattening himself out against the bed of the rail car, panting like an overheated dog, he couldn't help but mentally berate himself for not having thought of this before. As the lights of the railway crossing and the traffic faded behind him, and the darkness of the swamp once more closed in on both sides, Randall realized, though, that the open flatbed might not be the best mode of transportation for his escape. He was, after all, completely visible from both sides, vulnerable to exposure to rain, sun, and whatever other forms of meteorological phenomena Louisiana or its neighboring states cared to throw at him, and the flatbed was becoming more and more uncomfortable, besides. Glancing behind him, whilst still lying low, he could see that there were at least three more similar flatbed cars, followed by the black, cylindrical bulk of tanker cars. Not much use heading THAT way. Up ahead, he could see perhaps two more flatbeds, both loaded with what appeared to be 2x4 lumber, and in front of those, the more inviting squarish outline of regular boxcars. Hopefully, one of those would be unlocked and if he got REALLY lucky, also empty.

Summoning what seemed to be the last of his strength, Randall got rose shakily up onto all-eights, gathered himself like a coiled spring, and launched, landing on top of the stack of lumber on the car in front of his original escape ride. Moving forward, against the momentum of the train, he did the same again, and again, until he found himself on top of the first boxcar. Leaning precariously out over the edge, he tried the sliding door-locked! Sucking his teeth in frustration, he was forced to continue his pattern of leap-check door, for about six more cars. Glancing up ahead, toward the engine, Randall could see a faint glow in the sky where the tracks were leading; unless he missed his guess, that would be the lights of a town up ahead, and a town meant more railway crossings, and more people. He was beginning to get a bit desperate now, and the physical exertion he'd had to put himself through since the night began was really beginning to tell. Each leap he'd made from car to car, had been a tad more uncertain than the previous, and had left him with a few more aching muscles. Either he'd have to find a refuge soon, or face the prospect of being seen, or worse yet, missing his target and falling from the train, to no doubt roll right under the wheels of the next boxcar! Taking a deep breath, Randall made one final leap, barely making it, having to scramble up the side of the car to crawl across the roof. The engineer up ahead, oblivious to the stowaway, sounded the whistle as a warning to motorists at the next crossing, just outside of St. Martinville. 

Cautiously, and without much optimism, Randall leaned out over the edge of the car, and tried the sliding door. Much to his relief, and disbelief, it moved open a few inches! Randall let out his breath in a gasp; he hadn't even realized he'd been holding his breath since leaning out over the edge of this particular car in the first place! Pushing open the door even further, and gripping the top with his uppermost pair of hands, he swung the rest of his body downward, into the interior of the boxcar, halfway expecting to find it occupied, which would have been just his luck. Landing on all-fours, he took a few minutes to let his eyes adjust to the blackness of the interior, and finally satisfied that it contained no living being save himself, he began to move about. From what he could gather, the car was empty, except for him, of course. It might not be first class accommodations, but beggars, as they say, couldn't be choosers. It would have to do, plain and simple. Wandering over to one end of the car, after closing the door, Randall felt his foot come into contact with something fairly soft. Pushing against it with his toes, he realized that the something was, in fact, a pile of cotton sacks, each stamped with the logo, "Thibideaux Milling Co.", and smelling faintly of rice. Leaning over, he spread the grain sacks out a bit more, then literally collapsed upon them on his side, staring at the blank nothingness of the box car wall in front of him, illuminated only by slivers of light from outside through the crack in the door. The sound of the train's wheels obliterated any other sounds from outside, its gentle rocking motion a comfort to its weary traveler.

Randall tried, without much success, to will himself NOT to sleep. He had no idea where this train was heading, nor how much longer it would go before stopping. He did NOT want to be caught asleep if and when that train reached its next destination and some human came along and opened the door to this particular boxcar! To try to keep his mind occupied and put off sleep for as long as he could, Randall did something, which upon reflection, he wouldn't have wanted anyone else to see him do-he carried on a conversation. With himself. He'd taken to doing that rather often lately, not so much as to hear someone's voice, as to maintain practice. "Use it or lose it" would appear to apply as much to the art of conversation as to anything else.

"Well, looks like we're on our way, huh?", he inquired softly of himself. "Yep, done REAL good this time...just too bad that genius mind of your couldn't a thoughta this two and a half YEARS ago! Whatsa matter, gettin' SENILE in your old age?"

Ironically, the very act of talking to himself, for some reason, made him do something he'd tried to really and truly avoid doing, and that was thinking about _THEM._ "THEM", of course, were the two who'd thrown him into this godforsaken wilderness of algae and moss and mud in the first place. My, my-what would _they_ think of seeing him sprawled out on a pile of rice sacks, on the bed of a westbound box car, with no destination other than _someplace else, _talking to himself like a lunatic_?_ The thought of it all made Randall ball his hands into fists and clench his teeth. He hadn't even thought about the circumstances of his exile(you couldn't really call it "banishment", since in HIS world, banishment could officially only be imposed by a jury, following a trial, and he'd certainly not gotten one of THOSE)in many, many months, owing to his preoccupation with just staying alive, but now, the memory of it all came sniffing around once more, snarling and licking its chops, threatening to consume him with emotion. Shutting his eyes tightly against its onslaught, Randall tried to think of other things..._ANY_thing, to block it out, but when sleep finally did overtake him, his last concious thoughts were still of that fateful November day, what seemed so long ago...

In another, quite different, part of the Human World, someone else was having trouble fitting in, as usual. It was still daylight on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, aka "The Garden Isle". In the tiny, quaint little village known as Old Ko'Kaua Town, a children's hula class was wrapping up practice for the day. Moses H'aliewa, the class's gentle giant of an instructor, motioned for the final dancer to come up on the little stage, and explain the nature of her hula. A diminutive seven-year-old Native Hawaiian girl climbed the few steps to the stage, and stood smiling at her audience, which consisted of, besides her instructor, four other girls about her same age, all of whom had practiced their dances before she did. While they may have been close in age, it was clear, though, even to a casual observer, that the four in the audience would rather have to do _ANYTHING_ than to watch this last performance. One of them, a pudgy red-haired girl with glasses, sneered to the others, "You just watch, THIS one's gonna be about zombies or vampires or some stupid, gross stuff like that!" The other three sniffed up their noses in agreement, all simultaneously folding their arms in front of them.

"Now, Lilo, how about showing us YOUR dance, and telling us what it's about", the instructor motioned to the little girl on the stage. 

"OK," the little girl responded, as though she had no clue as to the opinions of the other girls about her up-and-coming dance. "Even my friends oughta like this one, 'cause it's not about zombies or vampires for a change! It's a fairy tale, and it even has a PRINCESS in it!"

"Yeah, I just BET...a MUMMY princess, most likely!", mumbled the red-head to one of her companions, earning her a warning glance from Moses.

Unfazed, Lilo began her interpretive hula, narrating as she danced.

"Once upon a time, there lived a little princess. She was a very talented little princess, but she was very, very naive, as princesses usually are. One night, while the rest of the castle was sleeping, the little princess opened her closet door, but instead of her fancy clothes and toys she was too old to play with anymore, she found a WHOLE NEW WORLD, a world than no human had EVER seen!"

"In this new world, the princess saw many wonderful things, and even met a few friends. One of those friends was a big, hairy giant, who wasn't mean like most giants are and didn't eat people's brains or anything, and the big, hairy giant decided that he liked the little princess and would take care of her."

"But in this new world there also lived a dragon, since NO fairy tale can be complete without at least ONE dragon. Now, this dragon couldn't breathe fire like the dragons you read about, but he was very, very cranky! Nobody else liked him very much, partly because he was so cranky, but mostly just because he was a dragon, and everybody else had been raised up and taught by their families to hate dragons. One day, the dragon tried to capture the little princess, 'cause that's what dragons do. The big, hairy giant got REALLY mad at this, and he decided to rid his land of the dragon once and for all!"

"They ended up having a big fight, and at first the dragon beat the pants off of the big, hairy giant-except that I'm not so sure that big, hairy giants even WEAR pants-but then the little princess got mad, too, and jumped on top of the dragon's head! This startled the dragon so bad that he forgot all about fighting the big, hairy giant, and the giant took advantage of the situation and grabbed the dragon by the neck so the dragon couldn't bite him, since dragons have really, REALLY sharp teeth-even sharper than a werewolf's OR a vampire's-and then he threw the dragon into another world where the dragon couldn't hurt the little princess or be cranky around any of the other creatures in the giant's world again!'

Moses was starting to clap, but Lilo looked at him, her arms hanging by her side, and told him, "I'm NOT done yet! There's more story to tell!"

"Very well, Lilo; don't let me rush you! Continue with this...uh...interesting dance and story, please!"

Lilo carried on, "Now, where WAS I...oh, yeah...ANYWAY, the story doesn't end there! As it turns out, the dragon wasn't really so bad after all. He was just cranky all the time 'cause everybody had always treated HIM bad! He was the only dragon in the WHOLE world, and everybody treated him different. After all that time of being treated different, he had gotten a really bad attitude, but who WOULDN'T? Now, he was a very sad dragon, 'cause even though he'd been thrown out of a world that treated him bad, it was still the only world he'd ever known, so what was he supposed to do? He wandered and wandered in the world he was now in, but everybody here treated him even worse than back home! Some of 'em even tried to kill him and EAT him, but he managed to escape!"

"One day, when he was feeling especially depressed, the dragon found himself on a magical island, and on that island he found ANOTHER princess, but this one was a bit older and smarter than the first one. THIS princess has a special friend, who happened to be a dog, and they decided to take the dragon home to their castle, since he was on the streets 'n stuff. At first, the mean old Queen didn't like the dragon, but then she hadn't liked the princess's dog at first, either. After a while, though, the dragon was able to prove to the mean old Queen that he wasn't such a bad dragon after all, and she gave in and let him stay, and now EVERYBODY lived happily ever after!"

Lilo took her bows, while Moses clapped and critiqued her dance and accompanying story. "That was very interesting, as usual, Lilo, almost as interesting as Yuki's hula about the one-legged hockey player! I hope you plan on developing it further, right girls?"

"Only interesting if you're a TWO-YEAR-OLD, _right_ girls?" sneered the red-head, gaining a follow-up chorus of "YEAAHHH!" from her cohorts. The little girl on the stage, Lilo, tried to hide her hurt. She had just known that for once, just this ONCE, her dance and story would be appreciated by the wannabe girl gang she euphemistically referred to as her "friends". Like all the rest, though, they had hated this one, too. As she left the stage and headed for the door, not even bothering to stay and listen to whatever instructions Moses was giving, she couldn't help but to identify with the sad, lonely dragon in her "fairy tale". Like him, she knew what it was like to be "different".


	3. Ch 3 Somewhere Beyond The Sea

Sorry it has taken so long to up-date, y'all. I have had to wait for school to end for the summer, but only have a little window of opportunity to write before attending a week-long graduate course on Art and Technology, but at least I get a free computer to use at school with it! My computer is also being, to quote "Evil Genius" Dr. Jumba Jookiba, a "piece of Bletzgorp", which makes things worse. I will leave it up to your imaginations as to just how "Bletzgorp" translates into English.

OK, the disclaimer stuff: I do not own any of the main characters in the story, not Lilo, Stitch, Randall, etc. They all belong to the Walt Disney Company.

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CH. 3- Somewhere, Beyond The Sea

In the yard outside the hula class, the casual observer would have noticed what appeared to be a miniature volcano, spewing plumes of dirt, instead of lava and ash. Upon closer inspection, however, it would have been revealed that this geological upheaval was, in fact, the work of a furiously-digging _dog_, or at least, what _appeared_ to be a dog. The creature responsible for installing this hole in the ground was medium-sized, stocky in build, rather like some sort of Bulldog in appearance, complete with broad chest and powerful limbs, a large, rounded head with short muzzle, and ending in a stubby little tail. Its fur, however, was unlike any Bulldog's-a thick, insulating (and now quite dirty)double coat, more like that of a Northern breed, such as a Husky or an Akita, but it was the color that most made it stand out. The creature's coat was of different shades of grayish-blue, more blue than gray, bluer, in fact, than the coats of most so-called "blue" dogs. The digger's ears were positively enormous, long, oval-shaped and highly-mobile, more like the ears of the title creatures in the '80's sci-fi movie, "_Gremlins",_ than those of any known breed of canine. The most un-dog-like feature, though, were its eyes-large, almond-shaped and absolutely onyx-black, like the eyes of a Great White Shark.

This creature's name was Stitch, an odd name, you might say, for a dog. Then again, its owner, or rather, its best friend, had a penchant for the odd and unusual. Stitch was presently digging a large hole for the simple reason that he was bored, waiting for someone to finish up hula practice, and the yard had had no large holes, and he felt it really needed one.

A slight sound distracted him from his landscaping, causing him to look up from the task at hand (or would that be, "at paw"?), his dirt-covered face turning towards the door to the hula class, his huge ears swiveling forward to catch the slightest sound. He was not to be disappointed, for presently the one he awaited appeared at the door, the little girl called Lilo. Stitch's nub of a tail immediately began to jiggle like the release valve on a pressure cooker going at full steam, and, shaking the dirt from his coat, he bounded out of the hole he'd created and galloped over to greet his friend, like any good dog would do.

It soon became apparent to Stitch, however, that all was not well. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Lilo's hula practice end this way, and it was unlikely to be the last. It wasn't his duty, though, to question WHY she would continually place herself to be the object of ridicule, but to be there for her when it happened. It was at that moment, approaching the now-unhappy object of his affections, that Stitch did something-well, a FEW somethings-most definitively NOT dog-like.

After lowering his large ears in recognition of Lilo's current mood, he stood erect on his hind legs, walking slowly towards her, peering into her downcast face. Then, his most un-doggy behavior yet-he SPOKE. Not in the usual manner in which dogs "speak", but with actual words, albeit raspy and in a sort of "Pidgen" all his own, a combination of broken English and his native tongue, a language which had not evolved anywhere on this planet. For Stitch, as things would have it, was no ordinary canine, but an artificially-conceived and created, laboratory-bred concoction of the genes of many creatures, from many different planetary systems, enhanced with the cutting edge of bio-genetic engineered features. He was, in effect, a _MONSTER, _created by a renegade scientist. He had been created to be a creature of pure evil, a remorseless destroyer of life and property, yet through what was unlikely to have been mere unguided coincidence, he had ended up here, on the quiet Hawaiian island of Kauai, as the best friend of a quirky little girl called Lilo Pelekai. Ironic, since 75% of his genes-the genes of _Canis lupus familiaris,_ the domestic dog, had come from this very insignificant little backwater planet in the first place, a planet known throughout the entire galaxy as nothing more than a wildlife preserve for a most critically Endangered Species.

"Gaba?", he inquired. "Why Lilo naga happy?" Stitch, of course, knew that the answer to his questions had something to do with the other girls inside, girls whom for some reason, Lilo insisted upon calling her "friends".

"They hated THIS one, too, Stitch. I thought they would LIKE it-it had princesses and EVERYTHING, but still it STANK!", came the little girl's sad reply. "No matter what I do, I'm still too DIFFERENT!" She was fighting a losing battle with tears.

In an attempt to console his companion, Stitch ventured, "Stitch LIKE different! Different GOOD!" Like many other times before this one, though, he knew that his words would fall upon deaf ears; for some reason, the acceptance of the other little girls meant much to Lilo. Rubbing her eyes, she simply turned away from him, her only reply, "Come on, let's go home." Dropping back onto all-fours, Stitch simply walked along in silence beside her, close enough that her fingers could find and take comfort in the soft thickness of his gray-blue fur.

Many thousands of miles across the Pacific ocean, to the northeast of the Hawaiian island chain, another monster, one NOT created by a rogue genetic scientist, but just as alien to this world as the blue-furred quasi-canid Stitch, was having problems of a different sort. Five nights prior, Randall Boggs had departed the steamy swamps of south Louisiana on what he had hoped would at least bring him some improvement in his situation. As it turned out, he had made a leap right out of the proverbial frying pan, and into the proverbial fire.

His impromptu journey inside an empty cargo car of a west-bound freight train, his ticket out of the swamp, had ended some forty-eight hours later in the heart of the Texas desert, a vast change from the humidity that had been the hallmark of his previous home (IF you want to call it that). The train had lurched to a stop, with the screeching and grinding of brakes, in a large rail yard somewhere just outside El Paso, not too far from the New Mexico border. It was the cessation of movement that had awakened the occupant of that rail car from a long, fitful sleep.

Almost immediately, Randall's brain was on high-alert, but the rest of him failed to comprehend the potential seriousness of the situation. His muscles protested fiercely, having become stiff during nearly two days of deep slumber on a less-than-comfortable bed of burlap sacks. Minor cuts, acquired during his daring tree-top flight from a pack of ferocious dogs, now made their presence known as well. On top of these discomforts, he also had the Mother of All Headaches, compounded by the fact that the last meal he'd eaten had been two days ago, and THAT had been an overcooked, oversized water rat. His system had almost gotten accustomed to going without nutrients for days at a time, since his unfortunate exile, but one can only tolerate one's blood sugar becoming just so low.

Listening out for human voices, Randall carefully, and painfully, stepped closer to the door of his box car. The lack of light from the crack around the door told him it was night; how many days had he ridden this thing, anyway? He had lost all track of time, and without being able to witness the sun's passage across the sky, he had no idea how long he'd been on this particular train, nor how far he'd traveled. All he could tell was that wherever he was, it was HOT.

Hearing nothing to indicate the proximity of humans, Randall gradually eased open the door to his traveling compartment. After his eyes had taken their prerequisite few seconds to adjust, he could tell that he was in a rail yard of some sort, surrounded by other trains, box cars, switch boxes, and large buildings, with many security lights on tall poles. He was about to step out when he heard the first voices, speaking in a language he couldn't understand. Two human males, chatting and laughing, were approaching the car in which Randall had arrived. Panic gripped him, what NOW? If he leapt out at this point, he'd be seen. If he waited inside the car, there would be a good chance that one of them would open it, THEN he'd be cornered! What if one of them, or both, was carrying a firearm? It was at moments like these that Randall especially cursed that wretched human woman with her shovel, for it was SHE who had deprived him of his primary means of defense-the ability to change the color and pattern of his skin, so as to blend in with any background, with ease.

When he'd first been thrown, like a piece of garbage, as it were, into the Human World, he'd found himself in a tiny scrap-heap that passed as a trailer, deep in the Louisiana bayou. The idiot who lived there, along with her pea-brained son, had mistaken Randall for an ALLIGATOR, of all things, despite his upright stance, eight limbs, and purple-and-turquoise coloration, and had done her best to beat him to death with a shovel. Taken totally by surprise, Randall had had no chance to even try to fight back, and his only hope of survival had been to literally play "possum", like the victim of a grizzly bear attack, to lie there and endure a horrific pounding, nearly to the point of unconsciousness. It had been the plan of these two barbarians not just to kill this "'gator", but to EAT him, but skinning and butchering a large animal can be a messy affair. So as to avoid soiling their humble little abode, the two had dragged their would-be main ingredient for a pot of jambalaya outside, and left him on the ground. Imagine the surprise of the would-be chef when she returned from her search for an appropriate skinning knife inside the trailer, to find her erstwhile meal getting to its feet, if somewhat shakily, and making good its escape into the blackness of the swamp! Randall's escape from Death By Cajun Cuisine had not been without injury though; he'd suffered a deep gash to the left side of his head, which was bleeding freely, and a fractured left wrist-his dominant hand-from trying to fend off the blows of the shovel. He had a hairline fracture to his lower jaw, and bruising to his kidneys from blows rained down upon his lower back. Worst of all, though, had been the head injury. It would plague him with excruciating headaches for months, and would make very difficult, at first IMPOSSIBLE, for him to muster the necessary mental concentration to blend in to any background. The other injuries would gradually heal, though thinking back upon that awful night, Randall was still surprised that he'd even survived. Whether to chalk it up to his indomitable Irish spirit, or some other factor, as though _something_ had bigger plans in mind for him, he didn't know, but what he DID know was this: even now, the skill of blending, which he'd developed way back in his childhood as a defense mechanism, and on which he'd based his career, took more energy and concentration than he was physically capable. He would have to depend on some other means of staying hidden from humans, or risk an encounter.

His moment came when a third man, unseen down the length of train cars, called out something in Spanish to the two that were approaching, causing both to pause and turn to look back the way they'd come. Seizing the opportunity, Randall leapt from the rail car, dropped to all-eights to facilitate a quicker getaway, and zipped quickly into the shadows. One of the men, hearing a movement behind him, turned again, only to catch a very brief glimpse of a long tail vanishing into the darkness in between two trains. When his companion turned to ask what had caused the noise, the first simply shrugged and replied, "el lagarto"("a lizard"), and the two resumed their inspection of the cars.

Slipping from one train and under the next, Randall found himself staring out through a chain-link fence into what appeared to be an endless expanse of desert. To his left were several large warehouse-type buildings, where he could possibly stay hidden in the shadows until an alternate means of transport came along. There was NO WAY he planned on heading out into that desert, with no food or water. Unpleasant visions of his parched carcass, lying in the sand, shadowed by circling vultures, filled his mind with dread even worse than facing down a couple of humans! Already his throat was going dry, unaccustomed as he was to this arid climate, so different from that which he'd just left, and he was becoming desperately hungry. Suddenly, a movement and some whistling near one of the warehouses caught his attention. A man was exiting the building, pushing a large hand car loaded with boxes. Moving around in the shadows to keep track of the human's movement, Randall then nearly leapt with joy, if his strained muscles had allowed it, that is. The man was loading the trailer of a large truck, which appeared ready to pull out. There was a brief interchange between the driver, already seated in the cab, and the one loading the truck, then the loader disappeared back inside the warehouse, presumably for one more load. This, Randall figured, was his chance, if he could just make it inside that truck before the loader returned, and could hide himself back in the darkened recesses of its interior, he could at least make it out of this desert. As with the train, he really didn't care where the truck was headed, as long as it went.

"Well, it's now or never-you know what they say; no guts, no glory!" he told himself as he forced his sore, aching muscles to respond just one more time, and made the dash for the open truck trailer. With one almost-feline bound, he'd made it, flowing inside, all the way to the back nearest the cab, to hunker down behind the boxes inside, just as the man with the hand car approached, still whistling, totally unaware that in his brief absence, a stowaway had come on board. In his hurry to finish loading the trailer, the man also conveniently forgot about the sub sandwich he'd left on top of one of the boxes he'd loaded inside, with just one bite taken out of it, along with a soda he'd never even gotten the chance to open. By the time he would realize his mistake, the truck bearing his meal would be some five miles down the road, heading west, and his meal and soft drink would have long since been put to good use by the unseen stowaway!


End file.
